Sunday, April 28, 2013

NARRATIVE PARAGRAPH OF THE WEEK: 36 Weeks of Common Core Writing Packets

As most of you know, I teach third grade. In Massachusetts third grade means the start of state testing. While they only take a math and reading assessment this year, they will also take a day-long writing assessment as fourth graders next March. Traditionally, the writing test was strictly focused on writing a narrative, but with the implementation of the Common Core, they may now be assessed in other genres as well.

That's a lot of pressure for 4th grade teachers!

With this in mind, I really wanted to focus on strengthening their writing this year to (hopefully) make things easier for everyone next year. Over the course of this school year, I have been using a consistent weekly paragraph writing format to improve my students' narrative writing. I have been using it in my own classroom since September and shared it with some teacher friends in other schools as well. I tweaked it based on my experiences and their feedback and am loving the final product.

I am so happy with where my students are as writers and am proud to send them on to the next grade. The criteria for success, the individual student reflection and goal setting combined with the fact that we repeated the writing process each and every week has created strong descriptive writers who strive to include strong word choices into their work. This is such an easy thing to manage as there is a packet for each week of the year. They can be used in class or as homework...how great is it to have a year's worth of quality writing homework at the ready.

This product is Common Core aligned for grades 2-5 {w.2.3, w3.3, w.4.3, and w.5.3}